This Week's Best Spot Bet Opportunities
By Ben Burns
Covers.com
Schedule spot
With the Pan Am Games taking place in Toronto this July, the CFL’s Argonauts and MLB’s Blue Jays will be bumped from their home inside the Rogers Centre. The Jays play 16 of their 25 July games away from home and the Argos open the 2015 campaign with five straight away from Toronto, including what is unofficially a home game in the books this coming week.
Toronto opens the schedule versus the Edmonton Eskimos in Fort McMurray, Alberta – an oil boom town in northern Canada, which is only about four hours from Edmonton. Needless to say, the “home” team won’t have many friendly fans in the stands at SMS Equipment Stadium Saturday night. Books have pegged the Argos as 4.5-point “home” underdogs.
Lookahead spot
Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer has the baseball world eagerly awaiting his next start. The right hander has put together one of the most impressive stints on the mound in recent years, allowing a single hit in his last 18 innings of work including a near-perfect game in his last trip to the mound versus the Pirates last Saturday. Scherzer has struck out 26 batters and walked just one in that span.
While it hasn’t been officially announced, as of Tuesday afternoon, Scherzer is expected to make his next start against the Philadelphia Phillies this Friday. That puts Washington in a tough spot in its series finale with the Braves Thursday, anxious awaiting to see how Scherzer performs the following day. The media circus will be insane as we get closer to that start, so the Nats could get caught looking past Atlanta this week.
Letdown spot
One of the biggest NFL offseason splashes was the Philadelphia Eagles’ signing of free agent running back DeMarco Murray, who led the league in rushing as a member of the rival Dallas Cowboys last season. The Cowboys didn’t show Murray the money he wanted and the Oklahoma product bolted Big D, putting a big circle around their Week 2 matchup on the calendar.
The Cowboys will no doubt be out to prove that Murray’s 2014 production was more to do with their stellar offensive line, and that heated NFC East rivalry game in Philadelphia sets Dallas up for a massive letdown the following week. The Cowboys host Atlanta in Week 3 and, win or lose against the Eagles, that intensity will be tough to match versus the Falcons as early 5.5-point favorites.